The end of the school year

The last two weeks of school were quite hectic....between trying to finish up lesson plans, to trying to squeeze in last minute bits of knowledge to the kids (which i think is silly...just review the stuff they already know instead of throwing new stuff at them), to working on our end of year presentation for the kids' parents. We split up the students into different groups that would cover different subjects. I got to do the MATH part! After some thought I finally figured out what my students should do. At the beginning I would have some addition and subtraction problems on the board and call on different students to read and answer the problems. Next I had my group count from 1 to 20 and from 20 to 1.

Then I had a story problem on the board, that all the kids would read together and then I would ask for a volunteer to solve it. It went like this...."Kron (one of the students) has 20 fish. He gives 8 fish to March (another student). How many fish does he have left?" After that I had 3 students come to the board at a time, and I would say a math problem and they would write and solve it. They loved this part. For alot of them it was a little competition.

 Last we ended with a Math game. Two people play against each other. You count to 20 by saying 1 or 2 numbers at a time. For example, I would say 1, 2. You would say 3. I would say 4, 5. You would say 6, 7...and so on. Whoever says 20, loses. The kids love it...and are very good at it. I'm sad to say that I have yet to beat one of my students!!!  For this part of the presentation, we had some of the parents come up to play against the kids...and the parents never won! The day went very well. The director, the head of the MEP program, and the parents, we all happy with our work and how we connected with the kids.

This first picture is of my group. The second picture is when I told them to put their seriously face on and to not smile!

Life didn't all go as smoothly as the end of year presentation unfortunately! I just had to keep reminding myself...an easy life teaches nothing!  I'm not sure if I mentioned that my visa initally came back as a 3 month single entry instead of a 1 year, mulitple entry. Again, with this lack of sense of urgency in Thailand, this issue was not dealt with, until shortly before we were to leave for our traveling! We were told that we needed non-B status visas instead of non-O that we had. The B's are for working. Yet again we were given wrong information from the beginning. So, I needed to get my visa switched to a B and then extended for a year. Unfortunately, it's not as simple a fix as one would imagine or assume! After driving to Bangkok twice and Lopburi once and being told a hundred different things...the final conclusion was this: they couldn't do anything to help me....I would have to leave the country...get a tourist visa for Thailand while I was gone at an Embassy inVietnam or Cambodia....then, come back into the country and get my visa changed to a B and extended for a year.  WHAT!?!?! I would have been fine with the whole thing....but unfortunately I haven't found a tree that grows money here! Bah. So, I guess I hope that I am able to get back into Thailand after our travels!

James was very aware of the fact that I was not a happy camper with this situation. So to try and lighten my mood, he says, "Do you speak Deutsch, German?"He's made a German comment to me before so I assumed he knew the answer was yes! The next thing I know he started singing this german song! It was an interesting sight to see this Thai man, singing a german song!

Cailin and I stopped at this little restaurant we pass every day on our way to school. The owner lady spoke decent English and really tried to accomodate us. We told her that we were leaving to travel but that we'd definitely come back. She said when we got back she would help teach us Thai! This is a picture of her precious little girl! The following picture is of their 2 pet bunnies....and yes, that fuzzball...is a real bunny!

The next picture is of a little friend I found by our washing machine. Not a fan!

This next picture is of a spider that was outside our house on the neighbors wall. If that thing ever managed to get inside the house....I think I would move back in asecond! He was about 6 inches in diameter.

We were invited over to supper at one of our students parents house. I was nervous about what was going to be on the menu...but it turned out okay! We read and played with the girls and then I noticed a piano in their living room (I'm sorry Mavis, it's only an electric piano, not a REAL one!). The oldest daughter took lessons and she played a few songs for me. I then noticed a piece of sheet music. I guess I assumed that music was the same around the world, as far as notes and how it's written, but I was wrong! This shows the symbols that they use and the girl explained to me that the symbols represent, do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti do! I'd like to see what bigger pieces of music look like.